NOW SHOWING: LONDON SCREEN GUIDE w/c 21.07.17

To help your hunt for adventurous moving pictures, RADIANT CIRCUS hand-picks London’s best movies, film events and gallery screenings for the week ahead*.

This week, there’s a flurry of films about relationships under stress including GOODBYE FIRST LOVE, SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN and TWO FOR THE ROAD.

Fearing such adult affairs, we’ve turned to gross-out movies KUSO and ASSHOLES for our featured films of the week. You can continue the odyssey of excess with the fairy godfather of scatalogical cinema, PINK FLAMINGOS, and the first — and best behaved — part of Gregg Araki’s Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy, TOTALLY F***ED UP.

FRIDAY 21 JULY 2017, 22:00, REGENT STREET CINEMA

KUSO got a brief mention last week but given an overwhelming need to unleash our inner adolescent we thought we’d revisit the offering, pairing it with ASSHOLES at Moth Club (below) as our featured films of the week. If the adults in control can’t behave themselves, why should we?

Looking for an alternative? VICTIM screens at BFI (18:30, other dates/times available) as part of their GROSS INDECENCY season (below). At the same venue, The Final Girls’ screening of THE SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE + DISCUSSION (18:20) is sold out, but there are some tickets left for its bonkers sequel (20:50)**.

SUNDAY 23 JULY 2017, VARIOUS

We are totally torn between our grown-up and juvenile selves today… so here we present two very different days in the dark…

First up, head to Moth Club for a gross-out triple bill. Get started with ASSHOLES (15:00) and then hang around for a John Waters dirty double of PINK FLAMINGOS and CRY BABY (19:00).

“Unfolding like a microbudget cross between “Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom” and “The Squid and the Whale,” Peter Vack’s impressively disgusting “Assholes” is the kind of movie that you wish you could unsee.” INDIEWIRE.

RAILS screens at BFI (23 JULY, 15:50).

Looking for an alternative? If your medication is working better than ours, try a very different day of gentle journeys at BFI. RAILS (15:50) is part of their SILENT CINEMA strand and should finish in time for MANJADIKURU (aka Lucky Red Seeds) (17:30). Part of INDIA ON FILM, award-winning MANJADIKIURU is about “a 10-year-old boy [who] travels from Dubai to rural Kerala to attend his grandfather’s funeral.”

GOODBYE FIRST LOVE screens at Prince Charles Cinema (24 JULY, 18:20).

MONDAY 24 JULY 2017, 18:20, PRINCE CHARLES CINEMA

GOOBYE FIRST LOVE is all about “a 15-year-old (Lola Créton) [who] discovers the joys and heartaches of first love with an older teen (Sebastian Urzendowsky), but in the ensuing years, cannot seem to move past their breakup.”

Looking for an alternative? In memory of fallen legend George A. Romero, support independent horror by seeing IT COMES AT NIGHT at Picturehouse Central (21:00, other venues, dates & times available). In the same arterial shower, critically acclaimed GET OUT screens later in the week at Stanley’s Film Club (below) and continues to be shown at Prince Charles (various dates/times).

LIVES OF PERFORMERS screens at Barbican (25 JULY, 20:30).

TUESDAY 25 JULY 2017, 20:30, BARBICAN

Dancer and choreographer Yvonne Rainer’s first film LIVES OF PERFORMERS screens as part of short season THREE LOOKS WITH TRAJAL HARRELL which is in turn part of exhibition Trajal Harrell: Hoochie Koochie (following?). Barbican invites us to “step into the dreamlike world of Trajal Harrell and uncover a series of imaginative encounters” with a combo ticket for one film and the exhibition (just £18, saving £5).

Looking for an alternative? Take your turkey basters to TOTALLY F***ED UP at Deptford Cinema (20:00), part of their DCQ strand. And don’t forget SPEED (BFI, 20:50) which we include here solely for Keanu in that white t-shirt. We’re not sure that’s why CHRISTOPHER NOLAN PRESENTS…, but we don’t care.

Looking for an alternative? Hold the hands of those lovely people at Stanley’s Film Club for their screening of acclaimed contemporary horror GET OUT (19:30).

SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN screens at BFI (27 JULY, 18:20).

THURSDAY 27 JULY 2017, 18:20, BFI

SPRING IN A SMALL TOWN (aka Xiao Cheng zhi Chun) is “one of the greatest of all Chinese films” and is about an already troubled relationship that is rocked by the visit, after many years, of the husband’s best friend. Expect (lots of) erotic tension.

Looking for an alternative?TWO FOR THE ROAD (19:30) screens at Sydenham Film Club (£5 on the door) and is their last screening of the season. We’ll give them the final word: “incredibly stylish, sexy and revolutionary in technique for its time… directed by Stanley Donen, featuring the absolutely stunning music score by Henry Mancini and starring the forever glamorous Audrey Hepburn”.

Tenderpixel continues to host CONGLOMERATE until 29 JULY. The gallery is also taking online submissions for international film and video competition TENDERFLIX 2017 until 30 JULY. This year’s theme is ‘daydreaming’.